Qualcomm beats estimates for Q4 amid legal battle with Apple

While the Wall Street was expecting $5.8 billion and 81 cents per-share, the semiconductor giant reported $5.96 billion in sales, or 92 cents per share, as the overall economics of the chip business continue to improve.

In the year-ago quarter, the chipmaker reported earnings per share of $1.07 on $6.2 billion in revenue. The company’s shares rose by as much as 2 percent in after-hours trading on Wednesday.

“Our fourth quarter and fiscal 2017 results reflect continued product leadership and profitability improvement in our semiconductor business, including strength in adjacent opportunities outside mobile,” CEO Steve Mollenkopf said in a statement. “We continue to see strong growth trends for global 3G/4G device shipments and are focused on protecting the established value of our technologies and inventions. We are leading the industry to 5G and are well positioned with our product and technology leadership to continue our expansion into many exciting new product categories, such as automotive, mobile computing, networking and the Internet of Things.”

Though Qualcomm did slightly better than expected, the company said its quarterly results “were negatively impacted as a result of actions taken by Apple and its contract manufacturers.”

In January, Apple sued Qualcomm for roughly $1 billion, claiming that the chipmaker had withheld payments it owed, and that Qualcomm charged unfairly high “royalties for technologies they have nothing to do with.”

This was followed by counter-lawsuits and Qualcomm in turn asking US trade regulators in July to halt the sale of imported iPhone and iPads in the United States. The chipmaker alleges that technology purchased by Apple from its rival Intel violated six of Qualcomm’s patents.

For the first quarter of fiscal 2018, Qualcomm projects a non-GAAP diluted EPS between 85 cents and 95 cents, on revenues between $5.5 billion and $6.3 billion.